Eastern Ontario

Marmora - Mary's Grave

Our reader writes:

"My friend and I are avid fishermen, and have taken a few trips to the village of Marmora, in Hastings county north of Belleville. We had heard a few stories about the area being haunted, but we really didn't look into it until this last trip.

I suppose two stories are relevant to the subject here. The first is the story about Margret Hughes, or Mary's Grave. I've heard two variations of the story, one is that she was pushed off a cliff in the Cordova Mines, and another was that she jumped off the cliff into the waterfalls near the old church. Her tombstone remains as a historical site, and she is said to haunt the area and on the anniversary of her death she appears in the forest near the tombstone.

Also, I've heard that the Cordova Mines and the surrounding forests are haunted. Deaths of miners I suppose, the details are sketchy at best, but in both areas the air feels thick, and there is a definite ominous feeling experienced ESPECIALLY after dark.

My friend and I were traveling along a roadway just north of Marmora, looking for a place to launch our boat into Beaver Creek. We found a clearing next to a bridge, and decided to launch there. We planned on traveling upriver a ways, then setting up a tent in the bush and camp out overnight. So we got on the water, traveled about a half mile down the river, and found a place to stop for the night. We got on shore, and it was just about night fall when we discovered a cave. It spooked us a little, but we pressed on and began setting up camp. About 10 minutes later, at about 10:30 pm, we noticed a lightning storm developing right overtop of Cordova. It was really creepy though because the lightning was a bright red, with no thunder at all, and was very intense. We decided that we had better leave, and we couldn't shake this feeling that we were being watched. Also, we could hear a strange rustling in the forest beside the river on out way back that seemed to follow us out. We got back to the truck in a hurry, and got everything into the back of the truck and parked in the clearing on the side of the road to relax and have a smoke. All the lights were turned off, and we were sitting in the darkness just talking when all of a sudden a tremendous bang hit the back of the truck, like we had been rear ended. We thought that maybe the tailgate dropped and the boat fell, so we jumped out to investigate, but when we checked it out nothing could be found. The boat and tailgate were as they were, there was no damage to the truck, nothing fell. We couldn't find any footprints or hear any rustling in the woods, which ruled out a human source. Needless to say, we left in a big hurry.

The next day, we decided to go to Cordova and the Mines to check out the ghost story there. We came back from our morning fish, and tried to start our truck. Wouldn't start, so naturally we thought the lights were left on. But upon further investigation, both the batteries in the truck had FULL CHARGES! We tried to boost it anyway, and about half an hour later we got the truck to start. So we decided to get our Cordova excursion underway, but when we tried to move the truck, THE TRANSMISSION WOULDN’T WORK! This had never happened before, the lever would move, but it just refused to fall into gear and move. It took 45 minutes of fiddling around before it finally started moving, but again, we couldn’t explain why that had happened. We thought it might have some relevance to what happened the night before, if the entity was trying to tell us something maybe, but only later did we find out that our truck was parked only a stones throw away from 'Mary's Grave'.

I was pretty shaken up about the whole thing, as was my friend."

Our thanks to the witness for sharing these experiences with us. If you have had a similar experience or have further information on the story of Mary's Grave please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.